


Lavender

by OhAine



Series: Memoirs of a Pathologist [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Loss of Virginity, One Shot, PWP, Porn with Feelings, Sherlock Holmes and Feelings, Sherlolly - Freeform, Strong Molly, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Virgin Sherlock, mollock, that gets resolved pretty damn quickly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 20:08:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7236658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OhAine/pseuds/OhAine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lavender <em>(Lavandula angustifolia)</em> </p><p>A pretty garden favourite with slim, sage green leaves and purple flowers. Used during the Middle Ages as an aphrodisiac, it is now known to ease anxiety and insomnia. Researchers have found that lavender increases slow-wave (deep) sleep, relaxes muscles, slows the heartbeat and aids the organisation of memory in the brain. </p><p>And most importantly, to Sherlock, its smell reminds him of Molly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lavender

**Author's Note:**

  * For [satin_doll](https://archiveofourown.org/users/satin_doll/gifts).



> For the incredibly talented and lovely satin_doll, her amazing Sherlolly stories should be taught in Shipping 101 classes the world over.
> 
> Beta'd by the benevolent and wise MaybeItsJustMyType who constantly encourages me in my folly. Thank you Kiki!
> 
> As always, The Divine Miss B, Cumberbatch's curls, Mofftiss and ACD own it all. There's a Bronte misquote in there somewhere too.
> 
> One shot, unconnected to the other stories in this series.

 

**oOo**

Sleep deprivation did funny things to the mind - even a superior one like Sherlock’s. He blinked and refocused his eyes and thoughts.

He’d had hallucinations from exhaustion before, been confused and misled by them, but no, he was sure this time, his eyes weren’t deceiving him. This was his flat, his room, his bed - his Molly sleeping in it.

“What are you doing in my bed?”

Standing in the doorway to his bedroom, hands on bespoke trouser clad hips, Sherlock frowned at the tiny pathologist swaddled in his Egyptian cotton sheets.

Molly rolled over toward him, pulling the bed covers with her and blinked sleepily against the subdued light cast by the newly ignited bedside lamp. Muffled by the pillow that she had pressed her face into she grumbled, “What does it look like, Sherlock? _Obviously_ , I’m sleeping.”

Huffing a petulant breath through his nose he retorted, “You’re being intentionally obtuse; you know perfectly well I’m asking _why_ it is that you’re sleeping in my bed when you have a perfectly serviceable one of your own at not too great a distance.”

Almost obscured by the pillow, Molly said, “Burst water pipe,” as though that little titbit explained everything. “Turnabout is fair play, Sherlock. You’ve commandeered my bed for far less compelling reasons than a soggy mattress.” She rolled over to stretch and yawn, her tee shirt riding up to expose the underside of one breast. 

Sherlock swallowed. “Erm…right, yes. Quite right,” he spun around quickly, turning his back to Molly. Averting his gaze from her lithe form, he headed for his wardrobe.

“I’ll just…ah…take my dressing gown and leave you to it then.” Fumbling with the mirrored door he caught sight of his own flushed throat and flustered countenance. _Dear Lord,_ he rolled his eyes at his inability to keep himself together after only a few moments in Molly's presence.

Pulling herself to sit up, the sheets tangled all around her bare legs, Molly looked at him, confused, “Where are you going?”

“John’s old room,” he told the spot on the bed that was not Molly’s deliciously shapely thigh - the one that she’d seen fit to put on display and torture him with.

“Don’t be silly Sherlock,” she said impatiently pulling back the covers on his side of the bed, “no one has slept up there in years, it’ll be damp and cold. You’ll catch pneumonia. Here,” she patted the empty space beside her, “get in.”

“I, um…” He turned, and… _Oh God_ , she was wearing just a thread bare tee shirt and knickers. Sherlock clutched his dressing gown before him, his knuckles white against the blue silk and closed his eyes to ward off the image of Molly in barely any clothes only to find that his brain was unhelpfully willing to provide him with an imagined depiction of Molly without any clothes _at all_.

 _How on earth did she get that way?_ He wondered, _Maybe she’d stripped naked for him, let him watch. **Yes** , that was it. He’d sat in his arm chair while she disrobed, then kneeling before him, hands bound behind her back, breasts pushed forward she would-_

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” Molly rolled her eyes with impish mock irritability, “it’s not like we haven’t shared a bed before. Your maidenly virtue is safe with me.”

“Eh…right…yes…” Because _his_ was whose virtue was in danger, he almost snorted.

“Look,” she began suddenly serious, “I know it’s been a while since we’ve shared, but-”

“No, no, it’s fine. I’ll just, um-”

Really there was no choice but to acquiesce, was there? Because what was the point in arguing with Molly Hooper anyway? She always, _always_ won.

 _And was his hesitancy even justified?_ They’d shared a bed before and he’d managed to keep his hands to himself. _Mostly_. And even in his current impaired state, he was confident that he could manage not to emote all over her - despite how _sentimental_ ( _Ugh_ ) he’d been feeling about her absence from his life lately.

So, doing what he was told for possibly the third time in his life, Sherlock entered the bathroom to dress in his pyjamas. Slipping under the covers, he switched off the bedside lamp and stared at the patch of moonlight on his bedroom ceiling, rigidly keeping to his side of the bed.

 _This was ridiculous,_ he thought _, he wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway, he may as well just get up and finish the experiment on cirrhotic livers that was currently underway in his microwave-_ Oh, but that would mean leaving Molly, sweet, beautiful, Molly who smelled like his mother’s garden after warm summer rain, whose body radiated comfort and contentment from just an arm’s length away-

“Mary tells me you haven’t been sleeping,” her back turned to him, eyes still closed and with hands tucked under her pillow, Molly spoke in a voice softened by slumber.

“I rarely sleep when I’m on a case.”

“You’re not on a case.”

Molly turned to face him, and Sherlock saw the crescent moon reflected in the dark pools that watched him.

“She says you haven’t been yourself for quite a while now.”

“Mary Watson, née Morstan, should mind her own business,” he sighed.

“Is that true?”

“Yes. She absolutely should mind her own business,” Sherlock smirked.

“ _Sher-lock!”_ Molly’s tone was gentle and playful but held a note of warning.

“Fine, yes,” he inhaled then puffed out a deep breath, “I’ve had trouble sleeping.”

“When did that start?” She asked, concerned.

His mind flashed an image of a disappointed face, a sharp slap and an angry voice: ‘ _How dare you betray the love of your friends. Say you’re sorry.’_

He swallowed thickly. “About a month after John and Mary’s wedding.”

“Is it…I mean do you…” The hand that wasn’t still tucked under her pillow came to rest over his heart, hesitantly she asked, “do you miss John?”

The heat from her palm radiated through the thin cotton barrier that covered his chest, and his body responded; he felt an urgent need to have his skin touch hers.

Covering her hand with his own, Sherlock said truthfully, “I do.”

And in an instant the awkwardness that had existed between them for months disappeared, forgotten in the blink of an eye. Molly laced their fingers together and brought his knuckles to her lips. She kissed them, once, twice, like a brush of angel’s wings against his skin, and then pulled him to her.

His head rested on her breast, and the hand that she’d been holding fell to the swell of her hip. A long, slow exhaled breath shuddered from deep within him when her fingers began to card through his soft curls.

Hooking her leg across his thigh to bring him closer, Molly kissed his temple. “I know it’s not the same, I know I’m not John, but if you’re lonely Sherlock, you can have me,” she shook her head, screwing her eyes shut tightly, “I just mean that, if you need a friend, I’m here.”

“Are you?” His voice was small, shockingly so, and if Molly had been able to see his face, she would have seen heartbreak, fear and loneliness warring for dominance. He’d been a man at sea, adrift without her.

“No matter what, no matter when, I will always be here for you,” still stroking his hair, her finger twirled an errant curl; she let it slide from the tip so that it bounced, then corkscrewed another raven lock to repeated the motion. One heartbeat, then two, “I wasn’t the one who pulled away, you know. It was you who stopped sleeping over at mine, you who stopped visiting the lab, you who stopped…who stopped everything.”

Sherlock’s thumb dipped beneath the waist band of her knickers to rub lazy circles over her hip, and something expanded painfully in his chest. “I was ashamed,” he told her honestly.

“And I was angry,” Molly countered, “but we can’t let that ruin our friendship forever, we have to move on Sherlock.”

His body shuddered a soft sigh, and his hand slid up her back under her shirt, pulling the hem higher so that her rib cage was exposed to the warm night air. With fingertips he stroked between her shoulder blades, then gently down her side; Molly hummed and shifted beneath him.

“I know,” he breathed.

Then a shocking revelation hit him; this was it. He’d waited for years to find the right moment with Molly, a chance to let her know how he felt, and here it was. Now or never, so to speak.

Sharing a bed with her had always felt intimate, but for no reason he could explain, this time the intimacy felt completely different. It felt overtly sexual. Erotic.

They’d danced around this for as long as he could remember. She tempted him from chastity, always had, but somewhere in the last year he’d lost the will to fight it anymore. Something inside of him had finally recognised the truth; that whatever a heart was made of, his and Molly’s were the same.

Years of repression and hesitancy dissolved in just a few moments laden heavy with the potential for something…something _more_. Slowly his fingers drifted upward across her ribs to brush the tips against the sensitive, bare, underside of her breast.

Time stood still.

“ _Sherlock.”_ Molly breathed softly. The fingers that had been idling in his hair tightened almost imperceptibly.

His leg slotted between hers and butterflies fluttered in his tummy. “If you think that I miss John so much that I can’t sleep, you’d be wrong,” tentatively he pressed his plush lips softly to her collarbone.

“Then what is it you miss?” she asked, her voice dripping like honey, thick, sweet.

Under her tee shirt, his thumb grazed her hard nipple and Molly inhaled sharply, her breathing becoming heavier, “You. Us. What we almost had before I... _Before_.”

Again she shifted, and Sherlock now lay between the vee of her thighs. He settled above her and rested his forearm beside her head on the pillow. Softly palming her breast, he lowered and tilted his head as she rose up to meet him in invitation.

Their breaths mingled; Molly gripped his sharp hipbone and breathed a small gasp when with a barely there brush of lips Sherlock chastely took his first kiss from her.

She was soft, _so_ soft. His imagination hadn’t been vivid enough to even come close to how this would feel. Exerting no pressure at all, he kissed her top lip, hitching his breath when Molly lightly sucked his bottom lip into her mouth.

Sliding her hands from his hair, she toyed with the curl at the nape of his neck, before gripping his shoulders, encouraging him to go deeper, and the kiss became a little stronger. The first touch of tongue to tongue made them groan into each other’s mouths. Delicate licks became firm and bold. Every second of their mutual longing and love poured into those first kisses, and now their hands, their bodies began to express the slow burn of lust and desire that had taken years to reach fulfilment.

Stroking the length of his back, she whispered, “Off,” tugging at the hem of his tee shirt. Sherlock arched his body to allow Molly pull the garment over his head, serving to increase the contact between his hardening length and her core.

With a sharp bolt of ecstasy caused by the added pressure, Sherlock threw his head back and Molly rose to lick and suck at his throat. He hissed and gasped when she scratched her nails across his nipple, and he rutted against her experimentally, just once, eliciting involuntary little noises that were both harsh and high as they filled the room.

The hand that had palmed her breast was stilled as Molly removed her own shirt; he then skimmed the curve of her waist and hip, pushing under the edge of her knickers to cup and fondle her backside. With a questioning glance to Molly that drew an “ _Oh God, yes_ ,” from her lips, he sucked one perfectly formed breast, then the other, into his blood-hot velvety mouth, grazing the dusky pink bud with his teeth.

Molly tangled one hand in his wild and tousled hair, pulling gently, as she scratched along the fluttering muscles of his back with the other, and Sherlock pulled her leg up to wrap around his waist.

“ _Sherlock_ ,” she exhaled shakily, his lips trailed kisses over her sternum and the column of her throat. He’d never expected it to feel like this; her arms and legs wrapped around him, cocooning him, her gentle lips breathing hotly against his skin, welcoming him with every worshipful caress.

Gathering his Molly into a loving embrace, he was filled with a rush of affection. Clasping his arms around her more tightly, Sherlock felt her heart beat thunderously against his own.

“I need to tell you, to say that I – I -” but the words just wouldn’t come.

“It’s alright,” she soothed, “I know. I’ve always known.”

 _After_ , he realised, _there would be time after to tell her that he loved her, that he would spend his whole life endeavouring to be the man she deserved,_ but for now he would have to tell her with his body, with his kisses.

Molly’s arousal just as evident as his, he felt the heat of her flushed skin, heard her breathing quicken with each passionate kiss. Holding her wrists above her head, he kissed and sucked the sensitive flesh on the underside of her arm. Her soft sighs caused him to turn his head to look at her, and she fitted her mouth over his in a fierce and heated kiss.

Sherlock smoothed strands of her silken hair away from her face, and she looked at him, so lovingly, so tender-

“You’re certain you want this?” his voice husky and a little broken, hoping with all of his heart that now would not be the moment Molly lost her courage or her faith in him.

A nod, then, “Yes.”

“This may not be-” he swallowed, his throat tight when he tried to speak again, “That is to say I have never- not physically-”

Closing his eyes, his face hot with embarrassment, Sherlock felt Molly pull one hand free and trace her fingertips across his brow, then the back of her hand caressing his cheek as his blood pounded in his ears. Though Sherlock’s touch was hesitant, Molly’s was deliberate and sure.

He looked down at her face, that was so full of affection for him, “There is nothing you can say that will make my answer anything other than a yes,” she kissed him softly, “but if you’re not sure, or not ready, we can just…just do this for a while longer, we can take it slo-”

Sherlock took her mouth in a searing kiss, and all question of who had done what before, or whether anyone was ready or not, flew out the window.

Releasing her other hand, Sherlock gripped her hips and dipped his head to trail kisses down between her breasts, over her abdomen and then lower. While his tongue caresses the curve of her hip, Molly raised her bottom off the bed to let him slip her knickers down her legs.

“You don’t have to-” Molly’s fingers tightened in his hair.

“I want to.” Bared before him, he kissed her inner thighs and spread her labia with his thumbs. With the flat of his tongue he swiped across her clitoris eliciting a groan from his lover that was shockingly loud in the quiet of his flat.

While his mouth continued to explore, his hands continued to stroke and caress Molly’s beautiful breasts. As he lay on the bed, his engorged cock – trapped between it and his body – began to throb in time with his heartbeat. When Molly tugged on his hair and brought his lips to her mouth, he pushed his pyjamas down his legs and kicked them away, letting his cock spring free.

“Can I? Please?” Her hand splayed against his chest, Molly guided him onto his back.

At first he didn’t understand, but then her warm lips kissed along his length - her breath ghosting over the crimson flesh, licking a line from base to tip. Precise and without hesitation, Molly wrapped her hand round him and kissed the inside of his thigh, lifting her head to say, “Tell me what you like.”

Sherlock took a deep breath, as Molly suckled slowly at the head, her hand squeezing and rubbing at a slow pace, her fingers bestowing fleeting touches between his legs to tease him.

“Harder,” he gasped, breathing erratically, “you can be rougher with me.” His head spun from the heady cocktail of pleasure and arousal.

Her grip tightening at the base, Molly sucked in long hard pulls, and something low in Sherlock’s belly coiled, causing him to moan.

“ _Christ_ , Molly,” his voice coming out deep and desperate, “I won’t last if you keep doing-” but then she pressed his thighs apart and shifted the pad of her thumb to his perineum, “ _aaaaaahhhhhhh,_ ” he breathed, his brain short circuiting as she swirled her tongue around the leaking head, pulling off with a flick of her tongue.

Molly spread herself out on top of his body, roughly palming his cock, and breathed full of desire, “Take me, Sherlock.”

Cradling the back of her skull, Sherlock rolled Molly on to her back and pinned her fully beneath him. Teeth nipping at her jaw, his mouth – hot and demanding - kissed its way along her throat as fresh waves of arousal and lust washed over them.

His cock now lay against her wet folds, enveloped in blissful heat. With his body pressed to hers, skin to skin, sliding back and forth, he canted his hips against hers in time with the thrusting of his tongue into her mouth. Electrical sparks prickled at his skin and his heart twisted in his chest. When his cock nudged against her entrance, Molly gripped his backside and pulled his body into hers in one gloriously hot motion.

Even though he knew it was about happen, the intrusion into her body was shocking and he panted against her neck trying to steady his spinning head, to stop himself from coming before this had even properly begun. So good, it was almost too much.

His verdigris eyes fluttering shut, a moan rose from deep inside his chest when Molly rolled her hips up to meet his, coaxing him.

“ _Sherlock_ ,” she pleaded.

He shivered and started to move again. Lips, teeth, tongues and skin seemed to be roaming everywhere all at once.

Writhing beneath him, Molly squeezed and kneaded his luscious backside as she murmured words of encouragement to him. Her tongue traced the shell of his ear and she sucked his earlobe into her mouth.

Unimaginably tight around him, her muscles clenched and pulled at his cock. Cautious at first, his rhythm became more confident as he acclimatised to the sensations that threatened to overwhelm him.

Fisting his hair, Molly kissed him; she tasted of mint and tea and their sex.

What had begun slowly, _so slowly,_ rapidly became urgent. Molly’s hips strained upwards to meet his every thrust. Buried deep inside her, he knew, he finally _knew_ : this, the _rightness_ of it, was impossible to deny.

Lost in a desperate haze of lust and love, Sherlock panted and groaned as he felt her convulsively tighten around him. Her thighs clenched around his hips and she groaned a lurid _‘Oooooooohhhh, God’_ , her fingernails biting into his backside.

“God, _Molly_ , I- ” he shuddered and finally let go, spilling inside her as his orgasm hit. With a gasp, he took Molly’s mouth, seeking out her tongue with his own.

**oOo**

Languidly kissing for long, slow minutes after they’d crested, Molly pressed her nose to his bare skin and breathed him in. Pliable and relaxed in her arms, she tenderly kissed his eyelids, then his cheeks.

He lay there, his breathing becoming deep and even, his lips periodically placing tiny, infinitely loving kisses to her damp skin. Outside the first light of a new day began to break, filtering softly into 221B.  Golden light on his naked skin revealed it to be stained and flushed from exertion and orgasm. He’d never looked more beautiful to her than in that moment.

“Molly?” he asked, his voice inflected with a rough, uncertain edge.

“Hmm?”

“I know this is…maybe…this isn’t the right time to ask, but I have to know. Where do you see this going from here?”

Molly heaved a sigh, “I’m not sure. I still want what I’ve always wanted.”

“Which is?” His fingers tightened unconsciously against her and his brows drew together.

“You,” Molly said simply. “So what happens next will depend on what you want.”

“And if I want- if I want everything?” his dry throat clicked and he swallowed hard.

“Then,” she kissed his temple, “that’s what you’ll have.”

Molly stroked his soft curls, grazing the hot skin on the back of his neck with her fingertips as they swept through his hair. She watched as every ounce of tension left his body and the rise and fall of his breathing became steady.

“Sherlock?” she asked quietly after just a few moments or so.

But already, _finally_ , he’d drifted off in to a peaceful sleep. Confessing to him that she had fibbed about the burst water pipe at her flat would have to wait until morning it seemed.

She smiled, snuggling down into the pillows. Careful not to disturb him, Molly tucked his head under her chin and let him rest against her. She lay there watching over him, her arms protectively encircling the slow expansion and contraction of his chest, but eventually she let herself be pulled under into slumber too.

Molly’s last waking thought was that Mary had been right about his insomnia: all he’d needed was a safe place to sleep.

 


End file.
